Adolescents' Immature Thinking Makes It Difficult For

People Come Here Penniless But Not Cultureless. They Bring Us Gifts. We Can Synthesize The Best Of Our Traditions With The Best Of Theirs. We Can Teach And Learn From Each Other To Produce A Better America.

Girls Have Long Been Evaluated On The Basis Of Appearance And Caught In Myriad Double Binds: Achieve, But Not Too Much, Be Polite,but Be Yourself, Be Feminine And Adult; Be Aware Of Our Cultural Heritage, But Don't Comment On The Sexism. . . . Girls Are Trained To Be Less Than Who They Really Are. They Are Trained To Be What The Culture Wants Of Its Young Women, Not What They Themselves Want To Become.

Adolescents' Immature Thinking Makes It Difficult For Them To Process The Divorce. They Tend To See Things In Black-and-white Terms And Have Trouble Putting Events Into Perspective. They Are Absolute In Their Judgments And Expect Perfection In Parents. They Are Likely To Be Self-conscious About Their Parent's Failures And Critical Of Their Every Move. They Have The Expectations That Parents Will Keep Them Safe And Happy And Are Shocked By The Broken Covenant. Adolescents Are Unforgiving.

Coming Out Of The Trance Of Denial Is Painful. But Crises Offer Us Opportunities To Rethink Our Lives. The Best Thing About Despair Is That It Wakes Us Up. We Can See The World More Clearly And Open To New Possibilities...and We Can Find New Joy In The Ordinary.

Many Young Women Are Less Whole And Androgynous Than They Were At Age Ten. They Are More Appearance-conscious And Sex-conscious. They Are Quieter, More Fearful Of Holding Strong Opinions, More Careful What They Say And Less Honest. They Are More Likely To Second-guess Themselves And To Be Self-critical. They Are Bigger Worriers And More Effective People Pleasers. They Are Less Likely To Play Sports, Love Math And Science And Plan On Being President. They Hide Their Intelligence. Many Must Fight For Years To Regain All The Territory They Lost.